Big Hats, Long Ties
by Bloodless Igby
Summary: Neal touches something he shouldn't touch. deaged!Neal taken care of by Peter and El, with guest appearances by others in the future.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** So, I got into White Collar and started writing this a month or two ago after discovering the joy of de-aged Neal through a couple of stories on this site. And now I am posting it even though it's a mess and I shall attempt to update it soon. I imagine it will be easier now that I got through this first chapter. Anyway, it's just for fun. Hope you enjoy.

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><p><em>I shouldn't.<em>

This situation is nothing new: Neal Caffrey is somewhere he probably shouldn't be and the tips of his fingers are close to something impossibly shiny and undoubtedly priceless.

Don't get him wrong, the backroom of Mrs. Ju's Beguiling Bygones _is_ in Neal's restricted two mile radius. And that sign on the door? Scratched, letters faded to the point where you could only make out the three E's of a supposedly longer word and there was no L, just ON-Y. But there's a teeny tiny knot of guilt in his stomach, the one he gets when he's in a particular situation and he thinks of Peter and the things Peter expects…no, _wants. _ The things Peter wants to be able to expect of Neal.

This situation is nothing new. And it is most definitely something Peter does, indeed, expect of Neal.

_I shouldn't._

But the aged gold chain looks ancient, and the snake hanging from it is large and matching and gem-encrusted to the point where the thing might as well just stop trying to be a snake and change its title to the Golden Jubilee.

_I shouldn't_, Neal thinks again, and his fingers itch.

He shouldn't. He shouldn't even touch it. He shouldn't even _be_ here, but Mozzie said there were items of interest in the backroom of Mrs. Ju's Beguiling Bygones and Mrs. Ju was conspicuously absent from the front of the store and Neal was _bored_. And everyone knows a bored Neal is a Neal with itchy, but nimble fingers, ten elegant experts in the art of thievery, and he's touching it, damn it, he's touching it. Touching it is the first step to stealing it and-

The muffled sound of a jingling bell comes from the other side of the door. Someone just came into the store. A customer, maybe, or the decidedly negligent Mrs. Ju, it doesn't matter, Neal needs to make himself gone. He yanks his hand back, pulls his greedy eyes away from yet another pretty thing to occupy his time.

He tries to pull his mind away with his eyes, but it doesn't come as easily. It goes to its default. It goes to Kate.

He breathes in and smells her burning.

His fingers go back to the snake. His eyes go with them, but they get caught on that dark space where the pads of his digits meet those gold gems and the phantom smoke is in his lungs. He thinks of Peter, of how these same fingers dug into Peter's arms while the con got lost in the smoke and sorrow of a plane on fire burning all his love away.

And he thinks, _I shouldn't._

* * *

><p>"I <em>didn't<em>."

Peter loves playing this game. Even if it ever only goes on for a minute.

"You did." El's smile is knowing. Her eyes are tired and her hair is mussed and she overslept. But she knows, she always knows, so she's not angry. "You turned off the alarm."

Satchmo's collar jingles as his tail wags. Peter puts up a leg to stop him from exiting the bedroom, lest he ruin the morning's hard work with his mischievous canine ways. El leans back against the pillows in a smug fashion.

Peter snorts. "What makes you think you're so lucky?"

His wife rolls her blue eyes. "Oh, just shut up and give me my cereal and toast already. You're going to be late for work."

Peter opens his mouth to protest, but his eyes catch sight of the digital clock on their bedside table and it snaps shut on its own accord. She's right. He's got about five minutes to leave if he's going to pick up Neal beforehand or he's going to be late. She's right. She's always right.

"Damn it," he grumbles good-naturedly, and turns around. The tray is organized up to Bureau standards: one small cherry blossom-adorned bowl of Super Sugar O's, one plate of toast with a dollop of strawberry jam, one cup of coffee hold the sugar, and one perfect flower in a miniature glass vase polished to sparkling, thank you very much. Peter picks it up from outside the bedroom door and takes it to his wife, leans down for a kiss, which she returns with fervor.

"Thanks, hon," she says, flashing her teeth in gratitude, and Peter's heart gets caught in his throat for just a moment as he remembers for a time so numerically high that he could never keep track that he's the lucky one. "Have a good day."

"You, too, hon. Enjoy your day off." He turns around, makes for the door.

El's voice chimes from behind him, "Oh, I will."

Peter smiles. _She will_, he thinks, and for all the years he's been bound to her, her voice sings in his head long after he's left the room, gone down the stairs, exited the house. For all the years, it still makes his heart thump like Satchmo's tail, his blood rushing hot through his body, and Peter Burke is a lucky man who is warm under his skin.

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><p>"I <em>won't<em>."

Well. This just isn't something June expected to wake up to today. She's had a lifetime of surprises – some good, some bad, some better left forgotten – but this? Her husband, her Byron, was a beautiful man with a brilliant mind who never ceased to amaze her with his inherent criminality, with his ease at bringing any amount of glorious illegalities into their home. June remembers, quite vividly, one anniversary in which he treated her to dessert – a ten thousand dollar sundae: the world's most expensive chocolate, most exquisite vanilla bean ice cream, twenty-three karats of edible gold, etc. etc. She has to admit even now that she wasn't aware of all the nonsense in that delectable beast of a final course (well, there was a crystal goblet and an eighteen karat gold spoon), but _this…_

This was even more ridiculous than that sundae. This was…impossible.

And where on earth have Neal's manners gone?

She raps her knuckles against the bathroom door. "Excuse me, young man?"

She doesn't usually pull the maternal chastisements out for Neal – actually, she's not sure she ever has, this might quite possibly be new, but right now… right now, "young" is an understatement.

A tiny cough comes muffled from the other side of the door, and a small voice says, "I'm…I apologize, June. I don't know w-what got into me. I just…I _can't_."

Neal is distressed. June doesn't blame him. She wasn't sure it was real at first – mainly because it couldn't be. Real things are possible things and this is most definitely an impossible thing. An impossible and ridiculous thing as her eyes concluded ten minutes ago when three feet and five inches of Neal Caffrey opened his apartment door, all dark mussed curls and blue eyes bright with fear and bewilderment.

He'd said something, something along the lines of "I don't know what happened to me" but it got jumbled somewhere along the way, caught in the sob that was emitted halfway through and then it was nothing but childish tears and a small blur running to the bathroom. Slamming the door.

"I don't w-want you to see me like t-this," Neal says now, and his cries have subsided to echoes of their former selves, nothing but hiccups and extra syllables.

It's impossible. It's ridiculous.

It's happening. June realizes this as she feels that sorrowful pang of heartbreak at the confused little voice that belongs to Neal. Her boarder, her friend, and the closest thing she has to a son.

"It's okay, darling," she croons through the door. "We're going to figure this out and get you back to normal, okay? I don't know how, yet, but we're going to fix you up. You don't have to worry."

"B-But…you're going out of town. You have to g-go see your family, June."

She does. She does have to go see her family. Her sister has fallen ill, is succumbing to the unfortunate fading of immunities that comes with age, but Neal…"It can wait, sweetheart. I-"

A firm, steady knock at the door interrupts her platitudes. Peter. Peter is here in the nick of time, as he so often is. Good, noble, heroic Peter. June releases a breath she didn't know she was holding.

"Neal?" Peter calls. "Neal, we're going to be late, buddy."

"Is that P-Peter?" Neal's voice asks from the bathroom, something akin to hope riding the end of the inquiry as June opens the apartment door to a Peter Burke who somehow looks both relaxed and impatient at the same time.

"Ah, June," he says. "How are you doing? Is Neal around? Kid's going to make us late."

"Peter," June says, and she didn't realize she was panicking but she must be, because he looks concerned, and then alert, and then he's in the apartment looking around all fervently for signs of danger.

"What's the matter?" he asks in a low voice. "June, what's going on?"

"Peter, I… I don't know how to tell you this-"

She doesn't have to. The bathroom door swings open and that blue-eyed little blur crashes into Peter's legs. Tangles around them. It takes a moment for June to realize that Neal's wearing his hat, that it's encompassing his head, falling over his eyes in a manner that is at once comical and adorable.

"P-Peter," Neal says desperately, his high voice a siren in the suddenly silent room. "Peter, my hat is too big and my ties are too long and…and…"

Neal trails off and tips his head back, lets the hat fall to the floor as he looks pleadingly up at this man June knows he regards as his personal hero. Peter blinks down at the tiny boy, and June sees both the spark of recognition and that disbelief that she knows from experience will still be there thirteen minutes from now, that will most likely be perpetual because this is impossible. Impossible and ridiculous.

"Neal?" Peter asks.

Neal nods, and takes in a shuddering breath. "I…Peter, I seem to have… I seem to have literally _become_ a small problem."

And June feels all of the energy go out of her bones as she takes a seat for the first time since discovering said small problem. She can't think of anything to add to that, and of all the surprises she's experienced throughout her somewhat long and exciting life, this is the only one she feels too old for.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Still a mess, hard to write. Just wanted to post so you know I haven't given up on it.

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><p>It takes more time than Peter has to spare to get Neal to calm down, but eventually he does and within the half hour, he's walking along a New York sidewalk firmly gripping a far-too-tiny hand, a ridiculous story of antique shops with mystical names holding equally mystical objects ringing in his ears.<p>

"Peterrr," Neal says, and the name drags slightly from the boy's mouth. A whine. Typical of a five or six-year-old or whatever age Neal is currently wearing. Equally as typical of the Neal of yesterday and the day before. Age is a changing number, Peter has learned. Height, a changing measurement. Neal Caffrey, however, will always be a troublesome child in need of babysitting.

Neal's consistent this way.

"You're going to show me exactly where this place is," Peter informs him, keeping his eyes straight and his feet walking. The little hand attempts to tug away, and Peter squeezes it warningly. "Stop that."

"I don't need you to hold my hand, Peter," the high-pitched voice pipes up again. "I'm well-aware of what's going on. I know this is bizarre and everything – believe me, I _know_ – but it's still me."

Peter stops in his tracks so suddenly that it catches the ever one-step-ahead Caffrey off-guard. The slight body plummets forward as the miniscule feet trip on the sidewalk and this is when Peter knows that it's true, that Neal is still Neal. What's more is that Peter is still Peter and this relationship is exactly what it's always been because Neal will always need Peter to catch him.

He pulls the kid up before that tender young skin hits the dirty cement.

Neal sucks in a ragged breath, wipes away at an unwilling tear that drips from a big, blue eye. The boy breathes deeply, trying to chase away the panic that's still seizing him because he's not used to this. Peter gets it. Peter's in that beautiful place, empty and functioning and profoundly lonely, where there is no El, where there isn't even a Peter, only a Neal and what Neal is and what Neal's going to do next.

Sometimes, there's a Kate. It hasn't been long enough for there to be an absence of Kate, an absence of shaking hands, or a quiet moment when Peter looks at the guy he used to see as a criminal and now sees as a…charge. Friend. Partner. Peter doesn't know. He doesn't think he'll ever know other than the gut feeling that whatever Neal is, criminal or no, friend or no, partner or no, Neal will always be his.

It's this place that he's in, Peter will tell himself later, it's this instinctual feeling, that leads him to kneel on the sidewalk and look at the boy, look at him closely, release his hand only to grip him about his tiny hips with big fingers. For him to kneel there for what feels like an eternity as New York rushes by in fuck-me-heels and taxi tires, just looking as Neal catches his breath from a near slip that would have given him nothing but a scrape, might have torn the clothes that June's granddaughter wore years ago in a tomboy phase put back to emergency use, but ultimately it would be nothing. Nothing but Peter and Neal in this goddamn weird situation.

Peter sighs and releases Neal's right hip, rubs a gruff hand over the child's brown hair, finds himself again in Neal's grateful, if shaky smile.

"I know it's still you," he says, not gently, not unkindly. It's not a comfort. It's a fact. "Your anklet slipped off your foot this morning-"

"I'm not going to run-" Neal protests, but stops at Peter's look, slouches a little defiantly when the agent continues:

"I know it's still you, Neal. Which is why when I don't have my eye on you, I'm going to have you by the hand."

"Why?" Neal pouts, scuffs his toe into the sidewalk.

Peter rolls his eyes, gets to his feet. "Because I can't handcuff a five-year-old, that's why."

And as promised, he takes the kid's hand. Starts walking again.

There's mischief, now, in Neal's voice. "And why is that, Peter?"

"You know why that is. And don't you dare go handcuffing yourself and blaming it on me. God help me, Neal, not even CPS will be able to save you."

The boy's quiet for a moment, mulling over this assertion.

"From you?" he asks.

And Peter nods. "From me."

And they walk.

* * *

><p>Neal blinks. He looks up at Peter. Peter is blinking, too.<p>

Something's not right. Something's amiss. That something is Mrs. Ju's Beguiling Bygones, which, just yesterday, was right here.

Right here, in this space, where it isn't now. Where now there's a rundown establishment with boarded up windows and cautionary yellow tape and a battered up sign proclaiming that it's for sale.

"It was right here," Neal mumbles. "Mozzie said…and I went…and I wasn't going to take it, I promise, and I didn't, Peter, I didn't. I just touched it a little. It was shiny. How could I _not_?"

He's babbling. His mind feels fuzzy, like he just woke up from a really weird dream to find himself in a new really weird dream where he's closer to the ground than he should ever be.

Except it's not a dream. And Neal really is this short and life really is this fuzzy.

"I didn't take it, Peter," he repeats, his mind in the memory, brushing over ancient gold and sparkling gems, caressing a slinky chain that it doesn't seize.

"It was right here?" Peter asks, and he takes a step forward, releases Neal's hand and runs his fingers along the edge of a strand of tape. "Neal, this place doesn't look like it's had a resident in years…"

"I didn't take it," Neal says again. "I promise, Peter. I didn't take it. You wouldn't want me to, so I didn't. I was trying to be…I was trying to be…"

Good.

"It's…it's going to be okay, Neal."

But Peter doesn't sound certain. There's hesitance in his voice, and he's looking at Neal like he's looked at Neal ever since the plane exploded. Ever since Kate wasn't a girl any more. Just flesh in the flames and then ash. Like Neal's going to crack any day now.

Neal waits for the punch in the arm, but you can't handcuff a five-year-old and you can't punch him in the arm, either.

Neal waits for it, though, the punch and the words.

"Let's get you to El," Peter says instead, and his hand is warm as Neal's disappears into it.

Neal feels numb, his memories vague, even the ones from not too long ago tickling somewhere close to his eyes. Peter and little kids, awkward conversations, the usually surefooted FBI agent unable to stand his ground in the face of small, human-shaped creatures with bright, curious eyes and too many questions.

Peter can't handle little kids, Neal remembers, and he feels a pang in his chest, and then his heart sinks and his fingers slip from Peter's iron grip with the same slithery ease as his wrists from handcuffs.

"I want to go to work," he says. "Peter, we're late-"

Peter snatches up his hand again, scowls down at Neal. "Don't do that. You know I called in while we were at June's."

"But, I want to go into-"

"Neal. Look at yourself."

Neal doesn't have to look at himself. Neal doesn't _want_ to look at himself. "Why don't you look at _your_self, Peter?" Peter should look at himself. His hair is rumpled and his tie is loose and there's a small red speck of strawberry jam on his off-white shirt. Neal would _never_.

Peter ignores the childish retort. "We can't explain this."

They can't explain this. Neal looks down at his diminutive feet.

"I'm still me," he says. _You can handle me. You're my handler._

"We've been over this," Peter replies. "I know."

Peter knows. But still, they walk.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** This is super short and not the best, but consider it a placeholder, or a promise for more to come. Hopefully better than this. ::is insecure::

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><p>Slow. Peter feels slow. Slow and dazed, as he walks down the sidewalk, his hand encompassing a hand that is far too small for the kid it belongs to because Neal is normally quite tall. Shorter than Peter, of course, shorter and smaller and often in need of protecting from whatever trouble he has found himself in, but...never this short. Never this small. Never this...vulnerable.<p>

It's really not much different, Peter tells himself, tugging at the little hand when Neal starts pulling away again, blue eyes having caught the sight of some sort of mischief that the boy wants to immerse himself in. Probably something clean and fashionable and shiny, not normal mischief. Not mud or dirt or shenanigans that can be taken care of with a simple bath because when Neal gets himself into trouble, it's never small trouble.

Well, Peter concedes to himself, tilting his head and glancing down at the boy. This is some damn small trouble right here.

He doesn't quite know what to do. He's not going to know what to do for a while now, but he knows that he can't take Neal into work like this. Luckily he called in at June's, because they can't know. What would they do?

The image of Neal strapped to a cold, sterilized table with tubes coming out of him hits Peter's brain like a bullet. It's not even the small version of Neal in his imagination, it's the big one, and if Peter feels his chest reluctantly tighten at the image of the big one, putting the small one in the same situation, well that's...

That's unbearable.

Because there's really only one person he trusts with this who isn't June. And it's not the little guy, Peter wouldn't trust the little guy with Satchmo lest he come home to find his beloved pooch incarcerated. No, the only person Peter can trust with Neal is hopefully still in bed, with that bright smile on her face as she bites into her toast and strawberry jam, feeling relaxed and well-tended and unbelievably charitable.

"But _why _are you taking me to Elizabeth?" Neal wants to know, and Peter feels the barely-there tug at his hand again, tries to swallow away the practically gelatinous mixture of irritation and fondness he gets whenever Neal starts in with his whys and what-fors and what-about-this-insteads. "I don't want her to see me this way."

"Too bad," Peter replies, "Because you have no say in the matter."

Neal kicks a stubborn toe against the concrete right before they get to Peter's car. Upon seeing it, he slips his handler's grip with that all-too-apparent ease and rushes to the passenger-side door, waits in vain for Peter to hit the unlock button on his key.

In vain, because Peter stops dead in his tracks at the sight, automotive safety laws rushing fast and hard, breaking down those threadbare levies of forgetfulness that had previously protected his mind from this particular problem.

"Shit," he says, staring at this tiny version of the bane of his existence. "You need a booster seat."

Neal gapes at him for a moment, then snaps his mouth shut. His eyes widen in horror and he gasps, "_No_."

"It's the law," Peter says, feeling numb, because it's hitting him full-force now. He needs to buy a booster seat. A booster seat for a microscopic creature of a child who was once…no, who _is, _who _remains _Neal George Caffrey. "We _have_ to."

"No!" Neal says, louder now. And he stomps his foot. He _stomps_ his _foot_. "No, Peter! No! You've _got_ to be kidding me!"

"_Neal_," Peter hisses. "You're making a scene."

Because he is. People are staring as they rush by. Some are rolling their eyes. Others are sighing or snorting contemptuously, because nobody likes a bratty kid. Peter half-wants to pluck Neal up and hold him out with straight arms in offering. Neal's not an _uncute_ child, after all. As a man, Peter has gathered the guy is considered pretty much genetically perfect, so it stands to reason that-

What is he thinking? Giving your kid away like a free balloon is even more illegal than having him ride in the car without a booster seat. He'll just have to pick the lesser of the two evils for now because he wants to get home as quick as humanly possible. El is going to make this better, he tells himself. El is going to make this all better.

"Okay, okay," Peter relents, before Neal starts screaming his head off or something equally as horrible. "We won't worry about it for now."

Neal breathes a sigh of relief, and resumes his tugging of the passenger side door handle.

Peter steels himself. "But you do have to ride in the back."

Neal pauses mid-tug and his upper body seems to go boneless, his arm slipping down the shiny black side of Peter's Ford Taurus. He turns towards the agent in abrupt movements of his teeny feet, a scowl set on his face and it occurs to Peter then, as it has never occurred to him before, that Neal is not merely "not _uncute_," but rather _adorable_ as far as tiny humans go. Especially when he's in a huff.

"Peter," Neal says, then.

To which Peter responds, "Neal."

Neal sucks in a breath, and the question comes out in a whoosh: "If I'm sitting in the back, how am I supposed to press the buttons?"

And again, Peter steels himself.


	4. Chapter 4

Elizabeth Burke believes in balance: for there to be good, for example, there has to be some bad, for there to be a winner, there has to be a loser, and for there to be a lawman, there has to be a criminal. The world is made up of balances and the acts and circumstances that create them. For these acts and circumstances to take place, there has to be time. Time is made up of lives, from birth to death. A person is born, it ages, it acts and is acted upon, it becomes part of the balance until it dies. Time moves ceaselessly forward, societies and environments change and evolve, sometimes experiencing severe hiccups but never going fully back. To regress is a human inclination, not an earthly one.

Which is why this, this three foot five inch blue-eyed conman trying to pull his teeny tiny (God help her) _precious_ little hand out of her husband's unrelenting grip, makes absolutely no sense. Zero. Zilch.

"Neal?" she asks, her mind numb, her cereal and toast doing funny things in her stomach, because what is this? This can't be real. People don't just age backwards. Not even Neal Caffrey, who is capable of a great many things from each and every point of balance, is capable of regressing to the height, weight, and possible mentality of a five-year-old. "Peter…is that Neal?"

Peter nods, looking as numb as she feels, and Neal stops pulling, his eyes large as he gauges her reaction to him. She wonders if he realizes how strange it is that she recognized him the instant he and Peter entered the room, correctly identified a truth at the top of a long list of impossibilities. It occurs to her that she almost always thinks about Neal in these terms, regardless of the moments where he is turning up the charm, where he is handsome and debonair and fully capable of getting all manners of things done, of bending the universe to his will. Because underneath that adult skin, inside that body with those quick appendages and cunning digits, there's not only a mind perpetually full of schemes, but a heart full of innocence. There's the way, at times, that Neal looks at Peter.

Like Peter is Batman.

Elizabeth is startled out of her maudlin reverie when Neal surprises them with one mighty yank of his captured hand, squeals as, taken off guard by Peter's lax hold, he tumbles to the ground. Elizabeth gasps, her hand going to her mouth, her feet just about to run to him when he looks up with suspiciously wet eyes and indignantly proclaims, "Peter _dropped _me!"

Peter snorts, looks down at the ground, nudges the boy's bottom with the toe of his shoe. "I didn't drop you, Neal. I wasn't carrying you. How can I drop you if I wasn't carrying you?"

"You let go!"

"You pulled away!"

"_Boys_," Elizabeth interjects, because it's only natural when they start up like this, never mind that one of those argumentative voices is chipmunk-like in terms of pitch. She watches, still numb, still amazed, as Neal gets to his feet and comes running right for her. His movements are ungainly, like those of a newborn colt, and she holds her arms out to steady him to a stop. But he's got this as he crashes into her side, hugging her leg and burying his face into her hip, before pointing an accusatory index finger right at Peter, eyes brimming with unshed tears.

Peter is unmoved. "You know, for someone who keeps claiming to still have the mind of an adult, you sure play five really well, Caffrey."

Elizabeth feels like she's watching a game of Pong. Or tennis. Something in which a ball moves back and forth and her eyes are forced to move with it, because now she's looking back down at Neal and his face is all but melded with her hip. She can't see his eyes or his nose, nothing but the curly mop of brown hair and the rise of his cheek that comes with a smirk, because that's what he's doing. He's _smirking_. With _tears_ in his eyes.

As for Peter's eyes, they're rolling towards the ceiling. "Hon, just because he's small, doesn't mean we can-"

"Trust him an inch?" Elizabeth says. "Yeah. Got that."

And back down to Neal, who has honest-to-God rivers rolling down those cheeks now as he looks up at her. No smirk, but a pout, his lower lip jutting out and quivering and _oh_, her heart.

If only she were that easy.

She lays soft hands on his narrow shoulders, kneels down so they're eye to red-rimmed eye. She says it quietly and with the air of her own mother in stern mode: "Are you trying to turn me against my husband?"

She catches the surprise flitting through a teary blue eye. "N-no, Elizabeth."

She squeezes his right shoulder with her left hand. "Then what do you want, Neal? What are you trying to con us into doing?"

He goes still under her touch, paralyzed in thought, and they're quick things, she can practically see them flashing through his head, his lips barely moving as he makes to say something witty, ambiguous, thought-provoking, more adult than his current stature. His diminutive hands begin to shake and she knows where he is, she knows he's with that plane, can smell the smoke in the air because when you tell someone to really think about it, think about what they're doing and why, where else to find the answer but in the most recent and most terrible thing possible?

Elizabeth doesn't hesitate. She asks, "Do you want a hug, sweetheart?"

He nods, not quite looking at her.

She puts her arms around him, lifts him as she gets to her feet, tries not to groan because he's heavier than he looks. His legs wrap around her waist and he buries his nose into her neck, his own arms limp against her sides, those hands still going at it like teeth in the cold.

But then there's Peter, whose own hands are big and strong and, as of this morning, know all about catching the hands of little criminals. He steadies those hands in his own and the three of them, Peter, Elizabeth, and Neal, stand there. Exist there. Balance there. Just like that.


End file.
